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In the summer of 1974, Colleen MacMillen, a pretty, strawberry-blond teenager, left her Lac La Hache home to hitchhike just a few kilometres to her friend’s house.

Even though hitchhiking was a common practice in the 1970s, Colleen never made it to her destination. Her body was found one month later beside a logging road south of 100 Mile House.

“Colleen was a lovely, sweet, innocent 16-year-old kid, and there are still no words in the world to express how terribly she was wronged,” her teary-eyed brother Shawn MacMillen told a packed RCMP news conference Tuesday.

Her heartbroken family was left without answers for 38 years. The RCMP revealed it now believes a U.S. convict, Bobby Jack Fowler, killed MacMillen.

The Oregon man, who died in prison in 2006 while serving a sentence for kidnapping, attempted rape and assault, has also been linked to the deaths of four teenagers in the U.S.

It is now known that in 1974 Fowler was in B.C., working as a roofer for Happy’s Roofing in Prince George, which is 291 kilometres north of MacMillen’s hometown, along Highway 97.

Fowler was a drifter, who picked up odd jobs, lived in motels and liked to travel long distances, often through the United States and at times into Canada, in old cars that he drove until they quit. He was an alcoholic and drug user who was rough with women and men, picked up hitchhikers, and frequented bars and restaurants.

“He was extremely violent. He was also very charming and disarming at some times. People told us his personality could change on a moment’s notice,” said RCMP Insp. Gary Shinkaruk.

“He was of the belief that a lot of the women he came into contact with — specifically women that hitchhike and women that went to taverns and beer parlours and drank — that they had a desire to be sexually assaulted.”

Shinkaruk is head of Project E-Pana, which is investigating the so-called Highway of Tears case — the murders and disappearances of 18 girls and women along Highways 16, 97 and 5 in B.C., between 1969 and 2006.

It was modern-day testing of 38-year-old DNA seized from MacMillen’s body that led police to Fowler, who had not been on E-Pana’s radar screen before.

Shinkaruk said Fowler is now considered a “strong suspect” in the cases of two other women from the Highway of Tears list, Gale Weys and Pamela Darlington. However, that has not been conclusively proven through DNA.

While Fowler has been ruled out as the killer in eight of the Highway of Tears cases, investigators are “fully open to the possibility” he could be a suspect in the remaining files.

Police do not believe a single killer is responsible for murdering all 18 victims, but investigators have long said there are similarities in the cases of MacMillen, Weys and Darlington.

Weys, 19, disappeared in October 1973 when she left the service station where she worked in Clearwater to hitchhike to her parents’ house in Kamloops.

Her nude, decomposed body was found half a year later just off Highway 5, in a water-filled ditch south of Clearwater.

At the time of her killing, Const. Ron Hunchiak described Gale as a wholesome teen who taught Girl Guides and wasn’t into drugs.

A month after Weys disappeared, Darlington, 19, of Kamloops, vanished while hitchhiking to a local bar. The next day, her partly clothed, badly beaten body was found face down in the Thompson River at Pioneer Park in Kamloops.

The only clue officers had was from a passing train crew, who reported seeing a 1950s off-white or salmon-pink rusty Chrysler coming out of a park along the river, and being driven erratically.

Police reviewing these three cases in 1981 released a sketch of an old car that was a possible suspect vehicle in the case.

Project E-Pana was formed in 2006 to review these and other cases.

In June 2007, investigators sent evidence from Colleen’s case to the RCMP lab for DNA testing. A profile of a man was produced, but it was not good enough quality to be matched with a name in the National Crime Scene Databank.

In 2012, police asked for the profile to be re-examined by the lab because of advances in DNA technology. That resulted in a higher quality sample being produced, which was submitted to Interpol for comparison to offenders in databanks in other countries.

On May 3, 2012, Oregon authorities indicated the DNA matched Fowler, who has an extensive criminal history with convictions in several U.S. states for crimes including attempted murder, assault with a dangerous weapon, sexual assault, arson and weapons offences.

E-Pana investigators have since probed Fowler’s movements over the past 40 years, contacting 31 U.S. law enforcement agencies and 11 prisons and speaking to Americans who knew him.

The RCMP has also tried to track down people who knew Fowler in B.C., including co-workers at Happy’s Roofing which is no longer in business, but still don’t know how often he was in this province.

Police are appealing for information from the public.

“We believe there are people out there who employed Fowler, worked with him, socialized with him or even waited on him while he was in British Columbia,” Shinkaruk said.

“Think back to the 70s, 80s and 90s, and your own memories of that time period ... and please call us with any information you may have about him.”

The RCMP’s interest in Fowler prompted authorities in the U.S. to have a closer look at cases with similarities to MacMillen’s, said Ron Benson of the district attorney’s office in Lincoln County, Oregon.

Fowler is now considered a suspect in the murders of four young women — aged 16 to 19 — in Oregon in 1992 and 1995.

E-Pana has 50 full-time staff, including investigators, forensic experts and support staff, who continue to search for answers in the other 17 Highways of Tears cases.

“Will we solve the other 17? I’m not certain,” Shinkaruk said.

He noted police are confident they have identified suspects for two of the cases but the killers have died and don’t appear to be linked to any other victim.

There are separate “persons of interest” identified for a couple of other Highway of Tears cases, but there is not enough evidence to lay charges, Shinkaruk said.

It is possible there is another serial killer responsible for some of the remaining cases, but if that person exists he has not been identified by police yet.

Some of the other families have told The Sun this week they are frustrated and sad that there haven’t been developments yet in the hunt for their loved ones’ killers.

An emotional Shawn MacMillen said Tuesday he hoped for a similar conclusion for the other Highway of Tears victims.

He added his family is comforted by the fact Michelle’s killer died in prison in 2006 and “can’t hurt anyone else.” And they are also impressed with the police work that broke open his sister’s case.

Victim's family still heartbroken after dead U.S. sex offender linked to Highway of Tears slaying (with video)

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